Meta: Shut down your invasive AI Discover feed

https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/campaigns/meta-shut-down-your-invasive-ai-discover-feed-now/

by speckx • 1 year ago

538 224 1 year ago

mozillafoundation.org

iambateman• 1 year ago

This sounds like a big deal but could we get more details from Mozilla?

An example? A screenshot?

I don’t understand, after reading, when this is happening or how.

JimDabell2• 1 year ago

It does a terrible job of explaining (in fact it doesn’t even attempt to!), but I think it’s related to Meta’s new “AI social media app”:

https://about.fb.com/news/2025/04/introducing-meta-ai-app-ne...

I heard that some people are using the AI in it without realising that they are sharing their prompts publicly.

charcircuit• 1 year ago

And as always, you’re in control: nothing is shared to your feed unless you choose to post it.

You have to explicitly hit a share and post button in order to post to your feed.

jonny_eh• 1 year ago

But Mozilla isn't showing the supposedly problematic flow. Where, exactly, are things going wrong? Show an example?

vini• 1 year ago

Same, here's some context:

"Meta’s rollout of social features in its stand-alone AI app, released last week. Those quiet queries — “What’s this embarrassing rash?” or “How can I tell my wife I don’t love her anymore?” — could soon be visible to anyone scrolling through the app’s Discover tab."

https://www.fastcompany.com/91327812/metas-ai-social-feed-is...

ot• 1 year ago

While the company insists that “nothing is shared unless you choose to post it,” the app nonetheless nudges people to share—and overshare—whether they fully realize it or not.

DeepYogurt2• 1 year ago

Really just get off meta platforms

kennywinker• 1 year ago

Network effects have most people stuck on at least one of them. If all your friends use instagram/fb/whatsapp to keep in touch / make plans, leaving the platform is akin to cutting ties with your community.

Which is why there is a role for gov in regulating privacy and mandating interop between platforms. Asking people to “just stop using them” isn’t a realistic ask.

8fingerlouie• 1 year ago

Besides that, pretty much everything “after school” is being arranged over Facebook, as well as community “blogs”, newsletters etc.

Facebook solves this problem extremely well. I still remember the “good old days” of poorly managed Wordpress sites, shared Google calendars, mailing lists, and texts, and I’m not particularly keen on going back to that.

The sad truth is that there is nothing on the market today that solves this problem in a combined package, and you can add discoverability to the mix. If you’re interested in X you can search for it on Facebook and 9/10 times you’ll find what you’re looking for, from menus for restaurants to opening hours. Yes, Google does this as well but somehow people (here) are more aware of the feature on Facebook.

WolfeReader• 1 year ago

Actually it is very realistic to stop using Meta products - I've done it. And the more people stop, the less effective the network effect becomes.

rel_ic3• 1 year ago

I want to push back on this narrative - I got off facebook and now my friends just text me instead. A few of my friends also got off facebook. Sometimes I can't see a facebook event so I text a friend asking for details. It's fine.

add-sub-mul-div• 1 year ago

It's not wrong to ask people to be leaders instead of followers. The message and pressure will sometimes get through. It's better than doing nothing.

platevoltage3• 1 year ago

I finally ripped the bandaid off with Instagram early this year. I can't say it's done wonders for my social life. Mental health has been a lot better though.

gs172• 1 year ago

Yep, I've tried, but if I say, e.g. "let's use Matrix!" it ends up being the app they only have to talk to me, and most of what they say is "why can't you use the app everyone else uses". Most people already have a second choice that isn't much better than a Meta app (or is also Meta).

bigshot• 1 year ago

Only reason I use it is because of my meta ray bans. Once a competitive product comes out I’ll delete app immediately.

zer0zzz3• 1 year ago

I agree, but I am more of the mindset that we should be getting off all platforms if possible.

127dot1• 1 year ago

And from Mozilla business as well

cypherpunks01• 1 year ago

Reminds me of the story the other day, "Meta found 'covertly tracking' Android users through Instagram and Facebook" with the STUN requests being sent from web pixels back to localhost Meta apps (FB/IG).

I just don't think anyone can be using Facebook/IG, especially persistent mobile apps, while have any real concern about tracking.

Does FB still run their Tor onion service? That seemed to be the only possible way to use these products in the past without being subject to extreme tracking.

pier254• 1 year ago

Most of the world outside of the US runs on Whatsapp.

SMS is not an option because, again outside of the US, people pay by SMS sent.

There are plans for Whatsapp interop but probably only in the EU.

https://www.wired.com/story/whatsapp-interoperability-messag...

barbazoo2• 1 year ago

Signal exists, Telegram exists, and many providers are actually not charging per sms.

vachina• 1 year ago

Don’t get off meta, leech off of it. Don’t contribute any posts, comment, or any behavioral signal. Use the webapp, use them in separate, private browsing containers (if able). Uninstall and eradicate all Meta apps from your devices.

Sanzig• 1 year ago

While I am happy Mozilla is still going after privacy disasters like Meta, it does ring a little hollow after the Firefox terms of use change and subsequent back pedaling [1].

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/firefox-deletes-...

brookst• 1 year ago

Mozilla is definitely not ideologically pure. But so what? Who is?

thih9• 1 year ago

Context:

- “Meta has a new stand-alone AI app. It lets you see what other people are asking.” https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-ai-app-public-feed-warn... (may 2025)

- “People are seemingly accidentally publishing their AI chat histories with Meta’s new AI app” https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/05/05/meta-ai-chatbot-discove... (may 2025)

Note that the first link states that conversations are private by default and that user error is likely involved[1]. Mozilla’s use of text emphasis almost implies otherwise[2].

[1]: “To be clear, your AI chats are not public by default — you have to choose to share them individually by tapping a share button. Even so, I get the sense that some people don't really understand what they're sharing, or what's going on.”

[2]: At least that’s how I understood “_Make all AI interactions private by default_ with no public sharing option unless explicitly enabled through informed consent.” at first glance.

plasma_beam• 1 year ago

It blows my mind how many people still publicly post venmo payments, so this doesn’t surprise me actually.

laweijfmvo• 1 year ago

why venmo even has a "feed" is unknown to me. are people actually doom scrolling that?

ensignavenger3• 1 year ago

Seems odd to me, I use the app and it has never once nudged me to share anything?

recursive• 1 year ago

Perhaps you're sharing things without knowing it.

gundmc• 1 year ago

Thank you for this. One of these links should really be the one in the submission. The Mozilla petition doesn't provide any useful context.

pj_mukh• 1 year ago

Sidenote: How is Mozilla's comm's so bad? I had no idea what their petition was talking about.

Thank you for your service.

9283409232• 1 year ago

It's honestly impressive how bad Mozilla is at communication and its been like this for years.

mgraczyk8• 1 year ago

The reason is that most people wouldn't care about the actual thing happening. Mozilla chooses to frame things in a way that is more likely to motivate people to action, even if that means being vague or dishonest. In this case their point #2 is dishonest because it already works that way.

In the app there is a "Share" button at the top right. After clicking you see an interstitial with a big "Post" button at the bottom. When you click that button, the chat is shared.

colechristensen2• 1 year ago

The Mozilla organization is run poorly. I really wish it was different.

raincole• 1 year ago

Honestly, even after (quickly) reading the context, I still don't know why Mozilla had such a strong reaction to this.

vegetable• 1 year ago

Maybe one of their execs fat fingered and shared something embarrassingly.

abeppu• 1 year ago

I haven't used the app and likely won't but neither article shows the mechanism by which users opt into "sharing" their interactions. Is there a dark pattern involved?

Like, in lots of other app contexts, you can hit "share" and then get a modal that gives you options (do you want to share it via WhatsApp or messages or email or ...) and only after you select a mode and a recipient does it actually get shared -- but if you make a "share" button whose behavior is "immediately publish", people might reasonably be surprised if they actually just want to share the results with a specific trusted person who they expected to select next in the interaction.

btown2• 1 year ago

I'm not sure about this specific situation, but from Google Docs to ChatGPT to Notion, there's a clear distinction between "make this a shareable link to only those who have the link" and "also make that shareable link searchable/discoverable by the public."

If Meta is turning that "searchability/discoverability" on by default when a share button is activated on an AI chat - or worse, if they're not even giving this industry-standard option - that would both explain the confusion, and be a terribly unexpected dark pattern. As the parent notes, the activation of a share icon is not informed consent.

bigyabai• 1 year ago

I don't think that is the case with ChatGPT: https://www.vice.com/en/article/chatgpt-users-report-being-a...

ensignavenger3• 1 year ago

I did a test in the app, and it is pretty obvious you are posting the chat. You click share, then you are given a preview, and you have to hit post to actually post it publicly.

dumbfounder• 1 year ago

That context should be in there. Give me the facts or else it’s just whining.

USeyller• 1 year ago

Thank you, the linked article was completely unclear and vague on what the issue was.

ATechGuy2• 1 year ago

Has someone noticed a similar thing with ChatGPT and private Github repos? ChatGPT has recommended private repo links to me many times. Because they are not public, I get repo not found error. But ChatGPT can generate private code with no issues.

nchmy• 1 year ago

Are you sure the private repos exist, rather than just being hallucinations?

maeil• 1 year ago

Github -> Microsoft sharing everything with OpenAI sadly sounds realistic.

Or they don't exist in the first pLace, or they're now deleted repos, or they used to be public but went private, etc.

joshstrange• 1 year ago

Mozilla, come on. WTH is the "AI Discover Feed"? Can you link to something? Show a video? Post an image?

This entire page assumed you know everything about it, assumes you know about some kind of issue involving private chats leaking, and assumes it's been proven they training on private chats.

I'm not interested in trusting Meta at all and I can completely believe they are doing something horrible but this page doesn't give even 1/10th of the information needed.

bluSCALE42• 1 year ago

Who in their right mind would trust fb with AI questions?

dylan604• 1 year ago

fb users

zer0zzz3• 1 year ago

Why wouldn’t they ? For a couple years now with llama they were the ai good guys

bluSCALE42• 1 year ago

Because they've spearheaded the downfall of the internet and society in generally maybe?

zoklet-enjoyer• 1 year ago

So like do if I buy the Meta Ray-Bans will my pictures and stuff be posted for everyone to see or is this an opt-in type thing?

georgeecollins• 1 year ago

The sad thing is if they told you they wouldn't I am not sure I would trust it.

People think this is about giving away embarrassing information. Think if you are using AI to explain a contract, explore a business deal, etc. The sensitive information could be very valuable.

mgraczyk8• 1 year ago

Meta has never accidentally shared private photos. I don't see any reason to believe this would happen

SoftTalker2• 1 year ago

Just assume that every interaction you have with Meta will be public. Because it will be, either accidentally or if they think they can make an extra dollar by selling it.

And behave accordingly.

umanwizard2• 1 year ago

After 10+ years of using Messenger daily, my chats still have not become public.

I agree there are huge privacy concerns with meta, but hyperbole that anyone can immediately see is false isn’t the right way to convince people.

kyle-rb• 1 year ago

Messenger is also the only one of Meta's apps that I still use regularly and I was pleasantly surprised with their decision to roll out E2E encryption by default.

https://about.fb.com/news/2023/12/default-end-to-end-encrypt...

pests• 1 year ago

It’s probably beyond your 10 year cutoff, but back when Messenger was still just an email inbox on Facebook and the Timeline was all the rage, I do remember a message leak. For some period of time, if you scrolled back far enough in someone’s Timeline you would begin to see their messages as posts in the feed.

barbazoo2• 1 year ago

Do you know though that they haven't been accessed/used/sold? Chances I would say are much higher compared to Signal, Telegram, etc.

dmos622• 1 year ago

The punctuation in "Meta: shut down [...]" implies that meta is saying "shut down". It should be a comma, as in "Meta, shut down your [...]".

fastball• 1 year ago

Should probably be: "Dear Meta: ..."

Izkata• 1 year ago

Colon was how you'd get someone's attention in old chat apps. For example IRC clients that tab-complete nicknames would automatically add it if the input started with the nickname.

dmos622• 1 year ago

Interesting point. Then today it could be "@Meta shut [...]".

woah• 1 year ago

Meta: Shut down. You're invasive. (AI Discover feed)

Drew_3• 1 year ago

Mozilla should be more focused on figuring out how to actually make money and not this sensationalist stuff. Depending on how the Google case lands, they're finished.

__loam2• 1 year ago

Meta should be more focused on not being massive ass holes and not this invasive shit. Depending on how their own anti-trust suit lands, public society might decide to break them up out of spite.

zer0zzz3• 1 year ago

Yeah that’s not going to happen. They’re going to be building weaponry for the government soon.

Xunjin• 1 year ago

Going to be fair, when Mozilla focuses on new products to try to make money, people complain and tell them to focus on the browser because it's bad (it's not).

serf2• 1 year ago

no, people tell them to focus on the browser because the majority of features added in the past 15 years are either incredibly flavored (here's your new AI tab!) , or they're profit-seeking motivated (we're proud to present our new collaboration with Pocket (tm) (c), P.S. welcome to your new hompeage with cookies and sponsored assets. )

The major reason Firefox has a large market share is simply because Google is that much more abusive to users -- and that's not a great reason.

Nextgrid• 1 year ago

None of those products include "the browser", which is the only thing that keeps Mozilla relevant.

pier254• 1 year ago

Depending on how the Google case lands, they're finished.

Whiche case? Can you elaborate?

warkdarrior2• 1 year ago

https://www.theverge.com/23869483/us-v-google-search-antitru...

Google paid others to give preference to their search engine. Among those paid is Mozilla, who may lose this payment from Google if the court decides to block such payments.

klabb3• 1 year ago

Mozilla should

Why is HN obsessed with suggesting strategic decisions for this company in particular? It’s like the most popular thing to have an opinion about, and only on HN.

serf2• 1 year ago

because it represents a paper thin condom that prevents Google from fucking the whole world, and if it gets steered the wrong way we're doomed until the inevitable 1990s style anti-trust suit.

mmooss3• 1 year ago

Criticizing Mozilla in every situation is almost guaranteed. An odd behavior for a community that supports FOSS.

Mozilla's credibility is a threat to the powers-that-be in the industry. I wonder if that drives a lot of it:

Attacking the messenger is a very popular tactic now. You can see it on Fox, for example. Attacking the messenger changes the topic - it makes the messenger the topic, not the undesired thing - and the messenger often responds by embracing this new topic by defending itself. The undesired thing is forgotten and to the degree it's remembered, the attack is discredited.

Drew_3• 1 year ago

Because Mozilla's long term sustainability is good for the internet.

drillsteps5• 1 year ago

I mean... People are willingly sending their data to another computer operated and fully owned by another entity, and then take offense when that other entity does what it wants with that data (which I'm pretty sure is allowed according to their incredibly/intentionally vague T&Cs).

What exactly are they complaining about?..

thuanao2• 1 year ago

Mozilla: Stop lying. Now.

platevoltage3• 1 year ago

about what?

thuanao2• 1 year ago

They don't share chats with others unless you click the "Share" button to share the chats.

They are private by default. It's basically the same as every other AI chat app.

djaychela• 1 year ago

Dear mozilla (actually loads of Web debs)

Make your website strip trailing spaces off autofillled emails instead of saying they are invalid.

It's really not hard, I can manage it.

throwaway314155• 1 year ago

Seriously? That's your complaint? You pasted in an email with a space in it (somehow on purpose?) and rather than just hitting backspace once you had too make a mostly irrelevant comment about it?

clarkmoreno• 1 year ago

lmao

haolez• 1 year ago

I wonder what chain of events led to this design in the PM's mind.

mgraczyk8• 1 year ago

After trying the app, it's hard for me to interpret this article as anything other than Mozilla lying. Sharing in this app is the same as any other social media app.

In the app there is a "Share" button at the top right. After clicking you see an interstitial with a big "Post" button at the bottom. When you click that button, the chat is shared.

Am I seeing something different than anybody else? Why would Mozilla lie like this? Most of the "demands" are already satisfied.

Shut down the Discover feed until real privacy protections are in place.

Everything is already private by default and you can see what is public.

Make all AI interactions private by default with no public sharing option unless explicitly enabled through informed consent.

This is true already

Provide full transparency about how many users have unknowingly shared private information.

Meta shouldn't have to do this

Create a universal, easy-to-use opt-out system for all Meta platforms that prevents user data from being used for AI training.

This already exists (EDIT, looks like only for EU users. Personally I don't believe this is related to the public sharing claims)

Notify all users whose conversations may have been made public, and allow them to delete their content permanently.

This already exists

JoshTriplett• 1 year ago

This is a dark-pattern problem. A large number of people are accidentally sharing things to the general public when they intended to share them to specific people. That is one issue being flagged here. To many people, "share" means "give me a way to share to specific people", not "mark this for indexing/searching for the general public".

hanspeter5• 1 year ago

I don't think this is a dark-pattern problem in the sense that I don't think it is _intentionally_ deceiving.

I think Meta fully expected this feature to be used by people who are excited about their conversation with the AI and wants to share it publicly. Just like we see with OpenAI Sora.

There's not much to win for Meta if users instead are unknowingly sharing deeply personal conversations.

nine_k2• 1 year ago

A typical "Share" button, e.g. as seen in every Google app, allows to choose the recipients, including everyone (public sharing).

A button that always shares content with the general public should be called "Publish".

(We'll discuss cache invalidation next time.)

mgraczyk8• 1 year ago

I think it's reasonable to see this as mimicing every other AI chat app, where "Share" means share publicly. For example in ChatGPT.

jwitthuhn• 1 year ago

It would have made sense for Mozilla to mention that in the article. Instead they just lie about how it works.

cornedor• 1 year ago

Not a user, but isn't de difference here that users might expect a shared item only to be visible for friends, but instead it is public?

mgraczyk8• 1 year ago

That is possible. I wouldn't think that because there are no "friends" in this app but I could see why a Facebook user might think that. On the other hand, when you open the app you immediately see content from people you aren't connected to. It all feels very public to me.

bloomingeek3• 1 year ago

Your question is important because we need to understand nothing is private online. Yes, thankfully our bank accounts and other important info is PW protected, however, these PW's are eventually stolen by data breaches. (Didn't we all recently have to change our PW's on FB, Microsoft, Google and Apple?)

To think that anything used on AI is going to stay private is nice, but not likely.

hanspeter5• 1 year ago

> Provide full transparency about how many users have unknowingly shared private information.
Meta shouldn't have to do this

And couldn't either. How would they know if users shared unknowingly?

themagician• 1 year ago

Am I seeing something different than anybody else?

Maybe. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow.

As others have mentioned, the core problem with Meta today is the dark patterns. They move, edit, and remove UI elements specifically to optimize against whatever behavior they want the user to take. I'm always amazed when things end up posted, shared, or alterated in a way I did not intened or can't even remember having taken an action against. Things just seem to happen with Meta products… even for accounts that are idle.

And if you spend enough time with Meta products, you'll start to realize that no two users are guaranteed to have the same experience. There is no standard experience. The experience changes based on region and langauge and honestly who knows what else. They are constantly testing and optimizing for dark patterns in production. Spend an hour with the Meta Business Suite. The entire platform is essentially a dark pattern labyrinth of broken links, broken features, and UI elements that go nowhere or to deprecated functions. One team is trying to get you do X and use feature Y, and another team is trying to get you to do Z and use feature W. Business Suite just mashes it all together. You could freeze the codebase today and study Business Suite for months and you'd find that it's dark patterns all the way down.

TiredOfLife• 1 year ago

Why would Mozilla ship a hidden adware addon with system privileges to advertise a TV show?

Why would Mozilla integrate a random 3rd party service without asking?

Why would Mozilla send your browsing history to Cliqz?

Why would Mozilla integrate Google tracking without ability to block?

Why would Mozilla sell your data?

Why would Mozilla install a telemetry service that gets reenabled after update even if you disabled it?

Why would Mozilla lie like this?

Because it's Mozilla.

udev4096• 1 year ago

I’m okay with Mozilla handling my info as explained in this Privacy Notice.

The irony by making that checkbox mandatory for submitting a privacy protest form

paxys• 1 year ago

A social media company made an AI app that lets users share its results to social media. Shocker!

But sure lets write an article with zero details and just the right amount of buzzwords and engagement bait that it’ll make it to the top of HN and sustain today’s outrage cycle. We’ll go back to “Google is bad” tomorrow.

gojomo• 1 year ago

Lacks context & examples to know what they're concerned about.

Has a righteous, bossy tone that doesn't seem earned by case particulars or its (anonymous) author.

"Mozilla: Improve your messaging. Now."

brap• 1 year ago

"Mozilla: Improve your messaging. Now."

That was the first thing I saw. It was so bad I wanted to leave immediately. Dead givaway. My bullshit senses were tingling, but it got so many points on HN so I had to read the rest. I wasn’t wrong.

hedayet• 1 year ago

Don't touch anything that comes out of Facebook. There, it's that simple. Facebook and its people can't be trusted <period>

RadiozRadioz• 1 year ago

Why does this website not work correctly on FireFox Mobile? Good lord Mozilla, sort yourself out.

(The viewport only covers 1/4 of my phone screen and I can scroll it around in the black abyss)

pluc• 1 year ago

Stop asking and expecting a private for-profit corporation to do what you want or what you think is right. They are not there to serve you, they exist to profit off of you. Delete your account if you're unhappy with the service or the ethics.

boroboro43• 1 year ago

Mozilla post is quite bad at explaining what's wrong so I went to Meta AI app to try it myself:

- When you have a chat it has "Share" button

- When you click on the button it shows you a draft of the chat with "Post" button

- Clicking on the "Post" publishes the chat to public and sends you to "Discover" tab

- From published chat you can click on "send" icon to send link to the chat to someone else

IMO it is in fact dark pattern and goes against of how people perceive "Share" action. The fact you can't share without making chat public is also not cool.

For example top discover post I see right now is stylized picture of a baby, with original photo available if you open the post. I'm pretty sure the person who posted it was trying to share the picture with their relatives/friends.

Overall: Meta at its "best", better to say sorry rather than ask for permission...

lo0dot02• 1 year ago

If you are unsure what you are doing, do not do it. For example, I just posted to hackernews. The button in my app says "submit", but doesn't warn me about posting to the internet. Is there any problem with that? No, because I know what I'm doing and anyone using the Internet should too.

alanbernstein• 1 year ago

The nature of "being unsure" often inherently precludes being aware of that unsureness. Some companies are well known to exploit this basic fact of existence.

soulofmischief2• 1 year ago

Let's not pretend that context doesn't matter, including the average technical proficiency of the intended audience, or the fact that HN's conventions are recognizable to people who have grown up with Usenet, BBS, forums, aggregators, etc. That is not the case here.

dm319• 1 year ago

IMO it is in fact dark pattern and goes against of how people perceive "Share" action

Yes, exactly this. I use 'share' all the time on my phone between various apps which privately share photos, webpages etc with other people through messaging apps. That is my current understanding of what 'share' means.

HenryBemis• 1 year ago

In all seriousness, who expects and decency, privacy, respect (of human rights) from the makers of Myanmar flame-fanning, the scum who allowed/facilitates Cambridge Analytica (and the likes), to name but a few?

Perhaps Zuck wants to look like a good tech-bro by smiling at Joe Rogan and advertise "I am one of you guys, I too do BJJ", but in his soul he is a filthy snake who lies all the time ("FBI forced me and I railroaded you but 3 years later I come clean")..

"...it's my nature, said the scorpion."

hsuduebc2• 1 year ago

Yes please. It's invasive garbage. When I click "uninterested" on ukraine war news I immediately got russian propaganda. When I do it again I get back Ukrainian news. I just dont want to see it. Same with politics. It's just switching sides which it shows when I click hide but I cant hide the theme as a whole.

I recommend this extension. It blocks this ridiculous bullshit.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/undistracted-hide-f...

guluarte• 1 year ago

yep https://www.meta.ai/@halcon5555/prompt/jg3cmKxENMh

dmix• 1 year ago

Why doesn't Mozilla provide any specific context?

LoganDark2• 1 year ago

I so don't understand why everyone's been taking the bait and calling this company Meta. I guess because the restructuring was intentional by Facebook for manipulation purposes (everyone mistrusted Facebook at that point and they needed a new identity in order to try to gain people's trust again), while Google doesn't really use Alphabet as a front because they seemingly don't care if people know them as evil.

I very commonly see things like Google acquires this, Google acquires that, even in cases where the acquirer is actually Alphabet, but I almost never see anything about Facebook, because everyone's now calling them Meta. Maybe I'm fighting a losing battle at this point, but I will never forget their past actions nor malicious intentions just because they tried to change their name.

I know the brand "Facebook" still exists for the social network, but Meta is still Facebook at its core. Same people, same values, same data harvesting. They're just using other methods to get at your data, abusing trust that maybe people wouldn't have given to Facebook if the name change hadn't occurred.

I think I must feel a little bit like Louis Rossmann must've felt when Time Warner Cable changed their name to Comcast. He still holds all of their former misdeeds against them and I think it's a real shame that more people don't do that for Facebook.

Sure in plenty of people's minds Meta is still its own entire dystopia and a half, but it still feels to me like they've all forgotten the precedent that Facebook set all the way back when that name was the one they put on their dystopia.

axus• 1 year ago

To me, Facebook is the service I use as login credentials on McDonalds app and other companies, separate from my offline and online identities. Also it is a social network I don't engage with. Owned by Meta.

WhatsApp is a chat program I use almost every day. Owned by Meta.

Oculus was a brand of VR goggles, but now the brand name is Meta. Owned by Meta.

LoganDark2• 1 year ago

To me, Facebook is something I deleted around 2013. Never saw any real reason to create another account, honestly saw so many reasons not to.

WhatsApp is something I only use in a strict sandbox to communicate with certain Chinese sellers, as well as one friend who sometimes can't use Discord/Telegram.

Oculus used to be usable offline, wired and without an account, but now requires to be logged into an account ever since Facebook acquired it (as Meta). So my first headset was an HP Reverb G2.

Also, since 'VR goggles' are starting to genuinely be a thing (see Bigscreen Beyond, or probably more the Ray-Ban stuff and the other stuff starting to pop up in that category), the more general term that the Oculus Rift counts as would be HMD (head-mounted display).

Aeolun• 1 year ago

Kinda funny how they get upset at this, but not at the recent court order to preserve all chat history with ChatGPT.

CGamesPlay• 1 year ago

To be fair, in this one Meta is intentionally publishing these on their front page, while OpenAI is subject to a legally mandated retention policy pursuant to an ongoing lawsuit. While I think both are problematic, the Meta one seems much more underhanded.

spopejoy• 1 year ago

I don't understand the outrage about the court order and chatgpt. Is user data retained by a tech co somehow exempt from discovery? Say you're suing a company over mishandling user data, wouldn't that data become material to the case?

alex1138• 1 year ago

Ok so this comment section is 'appropriately' (really, guys? Listen to Mozilla) derisive

Bear in mind Meta/Facebook/Zuckerbook is the same company that's always employed dark patterns to get you to unwittingly share more

tacker2000• 1 year ago

Why are they getting worked up about THIS issue in particular? Meta is doing tons of other really shady stuff along with Google, MS, etc.

Are Mozilla they now the privacy guardians? This seems so weird.

Who is even using the Meta AI app?

They should be doing a petition about the Meta AI stuff thats happening in Whatsapp now.

CafeRacer• 1 year ago

I mean if you're using meta, x or whatever 'free' apps, you're the product. I am not sure why anyone would he surprised at this point.

The article really reads like as if Mozilla just wants attention.

isaacremuant• 1 year ago

Says the company that recently changed "we don't sell your data" in the terms.

How about you make a good browser (it's great) and you leave the political righteousness out? I remember when you ousted Brendan Eich unjustly. I remember when you came in favor of censorship for "safety".

I love the browser for its customization but the people at the company who write these things tend to be quite delusional and damaging to the brand and product.

rob_c• 1 year ago

Coming from the company that "owns" everything you type into the browser, except maybe you the user miss read that...

Go away Mozilla, so trying to wade into a new sector and virtue signal.

cykros• 1 year ago

Good luck with the protests; we protested when they brought the newsfeed in in the first place, and it was quite an uproar. You can see how well that panned out.

Deleting my Facebook as a gift to myself in 2013 was one of the better Christmas presents I ever got.

stephenlindauer• 1 year ago

At this point, if you're using any Meta product, that's on you.

Meta: Shut down your invasive AI Discover feed

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